Monday, May 30, 2011

Entry #881

Huge old dude came up at the squat rack next to me to do shrugs with 365. He was using straps. Really? I mean this guy's arms were gigantic and even I did 405 shrugs with a mixed grip back in the day.

He points to a 45 and goes "You using this?""Nah, go ahead.""You're not going to 500?""I am but there are plenty of others."

We get to talking. He goes over how he gets testosterone prescribed to him and that it completely turned his life around. Ah, that explains it. After reading anabolic forums a while ago I came to the conclusion that drugs can be a great asset if employed intelligently but that too many people use them as a substitute for old-fashioned intellect and training theory. This guy, who's 50, didn't know what a safety squat bar was. And Jesus, all he did was traps. 9 sets of barbell shrugs because he can't squat or deadlift anymore. Said his back hurt just looking at me.

4 comments:

To be fair, the SSB is pretty exotic outside of powerlifting circles, and being 50, he prolly spends little time on the internet, and unless he was a powerlifter in his youth, didn't read a ton of powerlifting USA in his 20s to be able to hear about it.I was going to comment that the deadlift starts out too far away, as you can notice by how the bar drifts toward your shins at the start, but realized you're using the hexagon plates, and beggers can't be choosers there when it comes to positioning. The bands may be pulling the bar back as well, but that's about as good a set-up as you're going to get in a commercial gym. If the leg press has any 100lb plates on it, grab them and slap them on the bar. They should be JUST big enough to bypass the edges of the plates and allow for a more realistic deadlift. I had to do that at Vandenberg.Good to see you pulling heavy again. Keep up the good work.

Oh yeah, if he actually was a powerlifter, that's pretty interesting. He may have heard of it as a Hatfield bar, but otherwise, prolly just out of the loop.Hexagon plates suck. The only thing they're good for is looping bands through the handles for speed benching.